Members in the Media

“A lot of people think we need scientists to deal with the science issues–the funding for NASA and things like that. I’m not worried about that. It is the countless other things that come before us that have scientific components that are ignored.”Rush Holt, U.S. House of Representatives, The Washington Post, February 18, 2014.

“If we build three east-west great walls in the American Midwest....one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma to the east, and the third one in south Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the tornado threats in the Tornado Alley forever.”Rongjia Tao, Temple University, USA Today, February 26, 2014.

“It could mean that we have to change quantum theory, the fundamental theory governing matter. Or it could mean that there could be weird activity in the very earliest moments of the Big Bang.”David Kaiser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on testing the quantum implications of loopholes in Bell’s theorems, NBCNews.com, March 5, 2014.

“The idea was just to trust that nature has designed a good way to do this.”Kerstin Nordstrom, University of Maryland, on designing the RoboClam, a smart anchor that burrows like a clam, The Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2014.

“Elastic threads are everywhere in our daily lives–from hair and textile yarns to DNA and undersea broadband cables. Even the honey you pour on your toast.”Pierre-Thomas Brun, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, describing his research on the physics of lassos, BBCNews.com, March 6, 2014.

“Our first suspicion was that this has to be a mistake…. We did many tests to try to rule out these spurious effects, and so far we have failed.”Troy Shinbrot, Rutgers, on his team’s discovery that fractures in granular material can generate voltages, The Washington Post, March 6, 2014.

“I actually don’t constrain myself personally with the practical applications at this point…. We don’t have to get a home run here.”Omar Hurricane, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, on the NIF’s incremental approach to achieving ignition, The New York Times, March 17, 2014.

“Inflation–the idea of a very big burst of inflation very early on–is the most important idea in cosmology since the big bang itself… If correct, this burst is the dynamite behind our big bang.”Michael Turner, University of Chicago, The Washington Post, March 17, 2014.

“Yeah, I ordered it 30 years ago…. It finally arrived.”Andrei Linde, Stanford, one of the theorists behind cosmic inflation, when asked if he had ordered something after being surprised at his front door with the news of the findings from the South Pole, The Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2014.

“Certainly everything in the universe that we see now, at one time before inflation, was smaller than an electron…. And then it expanded during inflation at faster than the speed of light.”Kent Irwin, Stanford, CNN Tech, on his team’s discovery of evidence for cosmic inflation, March 18, 2014.

“The most prized component we can be having here is a failed part [so future parts won’t fail].”John Hurrell, The Aerospace Corporation, National Public Radio, March 18, 2014.